Million Dollar Babies
UCEF Support for Ukraine's Orphans Tops $1 Million
By Matthew Matuszak
Special to America --- April 11, 2009
A Home with a Heart. The plight of Ukraine's orphans and abandoned children—the progeny of communism's breakdown of the family and Christian mores—is a national tragedy. The UCEF's response? Love and support. These girls enjoy both at an orphanage that has received major assistance from the UCEF since 2006.
LVIV --- Donations of the Ukrainian Catholic Education Foundation earmarked to help orphans and abandoned children in Ukraine recently topped the one million dollar mark. Since 2005, an anonymous Roman Catholic donor of non-Ukrainian descent has been giving annual donations for this specific purpose. The donations, delivered vis-à-vis the UCEF’s “Ginger Fund,” so named after the donor, have helped some 50 organizations in Ukraine, mostly Ukrainian and Roman Catholic, but also some Orthodox.
Major beneficiaries of the UCEF’s orphan fund have been institutions such as an orphanage in Petryky, Ternopil Region, run by Caritas Ukraine and nuns of the Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate, and a new institution also run by the SSMI in Zolochiv, Lviv Region.
“Caritas has had to suspend some programs because of the economic situation. We’ve had to let staff go. But we can’t close the orphanage in Petryky.” So said Natalia Mysula, assistant director of Caritas-Ternopil, which has benefited from the UCEF’s continuous support since 2006.
According to Sr. Lubov Starzhynska, past provincial superior in Lviv of the SSMI, the considerable gift from the UCEF allowed the sisters to ”finish repair work on the house in Zolochiv for orphan children who in these days need guardianship and Christian education, family affection and love.”
Though the SSMI had hoped state funds would be enough to allow them to operate what is called a “family-type” orphanage in Zolochiv, the nuns have recently asked for and received help from the UCEF to off-set operating costs, as well.
According to state statistics, there are more than 60,000 disadvantaged children in some 500 state-run institutions throughout Ukraine, not counting the smaller, humane-scale homes run by the Church that the UCEF supports.
Among its orphan programs, the UCEF’s orphan fund has also supported a program of the Patriarchal Curia of the Ukrainian Catholic Church to coordinate the church’s various ministries for orphans.
The UCEF has also supported programs for street children run by the Ukrainian Catholic organization Caritas Ukraine in places such as Kyiv and Khmelnytskyi. Recently, the UCEF has begun supporting a new effort in Zaporizhzhia run by enthusiastic graduates of Holy Spirit Seminary and the Ukrainian Catholic University.
“Every time you visit, your heart can’t stop aching,” said Nazar Krayivskyj, a 2004 graduate of Holy Spirit Seminary and UCU who has made mission trips to Zaporizhzhia. “You encounter homeless children almost everywhere here.” This situation brought the native of Khodoriv, Lviv Region, back east to try to help.
There are an estimated 200,000 homeless children in Ukraine, and Krayivskyj said that Zaporizhzhia has the dubious honor of being the country’s leader in this plight. With help from the UCEF’s Ginger Fund, he has opened the Rays of Light center, to work to improve the lot of homeless children. Rays of Light also tries to help children in state-run orphanages receive a better education through informal tutoring conducted by Krayivskyj’s volunteers, mostly local college students and the faithful of Orthodox and Catholic churches.
Disabled children, abandoned by their families in state-run institutions, have also benefited from the UCEF’s orphan fund. Ukrainian Youth for Christ in Novyi Rozdil, Lviv Region, has started a weekday workshop for the disabled in their area.
Before the workshop opened, recounted Vasyl Vasylyshyn, local head of Ukrainian Youth for Christ, “these young people with disabilities spent all day in government institutions with little activity, or on the street. Now they feel that they belong to a community. They can creatively realize themselves through work, interaction with one another, friendship and prayer. And in this way we foster in them the sense of their own dignity and the value of their lives.”
Roman Catholic projects also receive support from the UCEF, in places like Berdiansk, Fastiv (Kyiv Region), Stryi, and Lviv. And Orthodox projects have been supported in the Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kyiv regions.
Some projects that the UCEF supports are full-time, ongoing programs such as the aforementioned orphanages and outreach efforts to street children. Other UCEF-supported projects are more newly established—for example, supporting a program started by a Ukrainian Catholic parish in a village in the Vinnytsia Region that gives the children of alcoholic parents a place to go after school—or seasonal, such as a Christmas project for orphans in Simferopol, Crimea, in which the local Ukrainian Women’s League prepared their own recipes for the Christmas Eve dinner. “There are only three ladies there, but those three are a whole army!” said Taras Semenyuk, a 2008 graduate of Holy Spirit Seminary and UCU who helped organize this year’s Christmas dinner.
The Ukrainian Catholic University administrates the Ginger Fund in Ukraine for the Ukrainian Catholic Education Foundation.
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